Was Charlotte Badger a Colonial Renegade?

English convict and ship’s mutineer Charlotte Badger is heralded as New Zealand’s first “white” woman settler, who lived with a Māori chief after her arrival in the Bay of Islands in 1806. Almost nothing written about Badger has been correct. The core of her story has been hiding in plain sight in a contemporary newspaper account that has been misinterpreted by generations of historians. Colourful fictions added by two Australian storytellers further clouded the facts. A ship’s passenger list and logbook reveal Badger’s much more prosaic fate and confirm she did not settle in New Zealand after all.

Lipsia incassum obsessa: Caspar von Barth’s Epic Fragment on Banér’s Siege of Leipzig in 1637 (Lipsia incassum obsessa: Caspar von Barths episches Fragment zur Banérschen Belagerung Leipzigs im Jahr 1637)

This paper discusses a little known short and unfinished epic poem on the Fourth Siege of Leipzig in 1637 by the Baroque philologist and poet Caspar von Barth (1587–1658). The poem, the autograph of which is preserved at the Ratsschulbibliothek in Zwickau, is shown to be based on a contemporary newspaper account of this event. Whilst it is suggested that the poem’s shortcomings result first and foremost from the poet’s sticking too closely to the historical source, the main part of the discussion explores the various functions and purposes the poem could have been intended to serve.

From the Laboratory to the Headlines: Teaching Critical Evaluation of Press Reports of Research

This article describes a classroom exercise and an individual assignment designed to teach critical evaluation of research reports in the popular press. The classroom exercise uses active and collaborative learning to apply the principles of scientific investigation, particularly the distinction between correlation and causation, in analyzing the limitations of a newspaper account of a research study. The individual assignment requires students to locate and critique a newspaper or magazine summary of research. The goal of these two exercises is to engage students in active learning about research methods and help them to become critical consumers of media accounts of research findings.